"I have seen the Hanging Gardens of ancient Babylon," wrote a traveller, Philon of Byzantium, "the statue of Olympian Zeus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the mighty work of the Pyramids and the tomb of Mausolus. But when I saw the temple of Artemis at Ephesus rising to the clouds, all these other wonders were put in the shade."
If you go today to the site of the temple of Artemis, it’s impossible to conjure up how it looked when it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In a field on the outskirts of Selcuk a single reconstructed column rises out of a swampy reed-bed. It can only hint at the colossal size of the Artemision, a temple more than three times larger than the Parthenon and the first monumental building to be entirely constructed of marble.
We pick our way through a few battered marble fragments lying among the reeds, keeping a keen lookout for snakes. Water has submerged the rectangular excavation pit containing the temple’s foundation stones to create a pond inhabited by terrapins and a handful of white geese. Despite the glaring midsummer sun a desolate atmosphere hangs over the site. Even the cicadas are silent. All that happened here has faded into obscurity, the generations of worshippers long gone.
A few Turkish blokes lounging in the shade of a eucalyptus grove exhort us to buy a plastic model of the goddess Artemis. The Ephesus version of Artemis is a strange figure with many breast-like protuberances (some experts say they’re actually bull’s testicles on her chest), quite unlike the great huntress worshipped in Greece. It’s obvious she’s a goddess of fertility.
Thankfully British archaeologists didn't find this statue or it'd be in the British Museum. Instead it's travelled one mile to the Selcuk museum which annoyingly is closed for refurbishment so we couldn't see her there in all her buxom glory. We had to settle for this picture of her instead.
Artemis is the direct descendant of Cybele, the great Phrygian fertility goddess of Anatolia. Legend has it Cybele was the daughter of Gaia, the primordial Earth Mother. The cult of Cybele was celebrated with festivals of orgiastic fertility rites which date from at least 1,000BC. So when wealthy King Croesus of Lydia decided to build a new temple on the site in 550BC, he was reluctant to break with tradition and rededicated the existing shrine to an Artemis that had all the characteristics of Cybele.
Christianity finally brought an end to several centuries of Artemis worship when the temple was destroyed. Pondering on how these pagan goddesses evolved to suit new belief systems, it isn’t a stretch to imagine that the early Christians captured the old familiar pagan gods and reinvented them as saints. So the veneration of the Virgin Mary replaced the worship of Artemis.
Historian John Freely thinks so. “Thus Ephesus is once again the site of a world famous shrine, with the Blessed Virgin now the object of veneration instead of Artemis, who herself replaced Cybele, the Phrygian deity who in turn developed from the far more ancient Anatolian fertility-goddess, the Great Earth-Mother, whose worship goes back to the beginning of civilization in Asia Minor.”
As we head back to the main road to catch the bus we think how sad it is that all this has gone. What is really depressing is the thought that the only goddesses we worship these days are the likes of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian........what does that say about us?
If you go today to the site of the temple of Artemis, it’s impossible to conjure up how it looked when it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In a field on the outskirts of Selcuk a single reconstructed column rises out of a swampy reed-bed. It can only hint at the colossal size of the Artemision, a temple more than three times larger than the Parthenon and the first monumental building to be entirely constructed of marble.
We pick our way through a few battered marble fragments lying among the reeds, keeping a keen lookout for snakes. Water has submerged the rectangular excavation pit containing the temple’s foundation stones to create a pond inhabited by terrapins and a handful of white geese. Despite the glaring midsummer sun a desolate atmosphere hangs over the site. Even the cicadas are silent. All that happened here has faded into obscurity, the generations of worshippers long gone.
 |
| Storks nesting at the top of the column |
Thankfully British archaeologists didn't find this statue or it'd be in the British Museum. Instead it's travelled one mile to the Selcuk museum which annoyingly is closed for refurbishment so we couldn't see her there in all her buxom glory. We had to settle for this picture of her instead.
Artemis is the direct descendant of Cybele, the great Phrygian fertility goddess of Anatolia. Legend has it Cybele was the daughter of Gaia, the primordial Earth Mother. The cult of Cybele was celebrated with festivals of orgiastic fertility rites which date from at least 1,000BC. So when wealthy King Croesus of Lydia decided to build a new temple on the site in 550BC, he was reluctant to break with tradition and rededicated the existing shrine to an Artemis that had all the characteristics of Cybele.
Christianity finally brought an end to several centuries of Artemis worship when the temple was destroyed. Pondering on how these pagan goddesses evolved to suit new belief systems, it isn’t a stretch to imagine that the early Christians captured the old familiar pagan gods and reinvented them as saints. So the veneration of the Virgin Mary replaced the worship of Artemis.
Historian John Freely thinks so. “Thus Ephesus is once again the site of a world famous shrine, with the Blessed Virgin now the object of veneration instead of Artemis, who herself replaced Cybele, the Phrygian deity who in turn developed from the far more ancient Anatolian fertility-goddess, the Great Earth-Mother, whose worship goes back to the beginning of civilization in Asia Minor.”
As we head back to the main road to catch the bus we think how sad it is that all this has gone. What is really depressing is the thought that the only goddesses we worship these days are the likes of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian........what does that say about us?
1 comment:
I'm reading a series of books that take place back during the time when the Artemission was still in her glory days. The book describes it in some detail but I wanted to see what it might have looked like. I found your blog post and wanted to let you know I stopped by. Thanks for the pics :)
The books, if you're interested, are by Francine Rivers and are called The Mark of the Lion series. 3 books in the series.
Post a Comment